


Blackout

by audreyskdramablog



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Horror, Survival Horror, Video Game Mechanics, action scenes are the worst, as best as i could manage at least, with a bit of extra blood thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 17:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15912843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyskdramablog/pseuds/audreyskdramablog
Summary: “The power’s out,” Ignis says grimly. Noct can finally see him thanks to the weak light of the phone screen. He’s still in his pajamas, peering out the small gap he’s making between the curtains and the glass with a dagger. “The entire outpost is dark from what I can tell.”If the lights are out, then there is nothing to keep the daemons at bay. And Gladio walked out there alone.





	Blackout

**Author's Note:**

> This is set early on the guys’ adventure, just after collecting a royal arm or two and before getting Titan. It would be too easy if Noctis could just summon an Astral to fix things.
> 
> [Original prompt:](https://ffxv-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5690.html?thread=10793530#cmt10793530) “An outpost where the guys are staying loses power in the middle of the night (due to a storm).
> 
> And then the daemons show up.
> 
> (Basically, the guys having to fight for their lives, and save other lives, after being woken out of a sleep by screaming and/or some creepy thing appearing in their room/outside their camper.)”

Noctis wakes, sudden and sharp, his heart pounding like he was ripped from a nightmare. But there is nothing lurking at the edges of his mind to explain his abrupt return to consciousness, and their motel room is dark and still except for the rain and wind beating at the windows. 

No, that isn’t quite right. 

Ignis was next to him in the bed when he fell asleep. The cheap mattress felt like it might buckle under their combined weights, but with the remnants of sleep fading, Noctis realizes there is no one beside him. 

“Ignis?” 

“Here, Highness.” Ignis’s voice is low, pitched just loud enough to be heard over the storm. It is also coming from the foot of the bed. Then: “Gladio.”

“I’ll handle it.” 

Noct can’t hear the door opening and closing over the weather outside, but the room feels emptier a moment later.

He levers himself up on one elbow and peers at the patch of night where he thinks Ignis is standing. The mattresses at this motel might be terrible, but their blackout curtains are actually decent at keeping the light from the streetlamps out. It’s dark enough he isn’t sure if he can actually see Ignis or if his mind is supplying the silhouette. 

“What’s going on?” That’s Prompto’s voice from the other bed, rough with sleep. 

“We heard something that may have been screaming,” Ignis says, his voice calm in spite of what he is saying. “Gladio went to check.”

Noctis thinks the maybe-scream is probably what woke him, though he doesn’t remember hearing it. There aren’t many things that can pull him out of sleep so quickly, but screaming would probably do it. He is certainly awake now—way too early—and he pushes himself all the way to sitting. 

It’s a small outpost, barely large enough for a gas station, convenience store, and diner. The motel has just four rooms—all empty but theirs, as the owner said they could have their pick of the lot. If a pair of hunters hadn’t beaten them to claiming the caravan, they’d be in there since their funds are lower than Ignis likes. There are a few additional buildings, houses for the residents, some storage and maintenance buildings, but a place like this can’t have more than twenty people at the very most. It’s a place that exists due to the sheer stubbornness of the people and the coin of the travelers passing through to better places. 

If it hadn’t been for the storm, they would have kept going, too. 

Another sound cuts just above the storm. There is no question this time about what it is.

Daggers appear in Ignis’s hands, the small burst of magic lighting up the room for a moment. “On your feet!”

Noct doesn’t need to be told twice. He scrambles out of bed and reaches for the lamp on the nightstand between the beds. His fingers find the chain, and he gives it a pull—

The light doesn’t come on. 

He yanks the chain again. Still nothing. Fear turns his words sharp as he abandons the lamp and lunges for his phone. “Ignis! The windows.”

Either Ignis heard him fumbling to turn on the lamp, or he has the same surge of dread that Noct does, because Ignis is moving across the room, the glow of his daggers trailing him. 

Noct grabs his phone and hits the home button. The screen lights up, but the icon in the top right corner indicates it is shortly after four in the morning and that the phone is only half charged. 

It should be fully charged. It is still plugged in. 

“The power’s out,” Ignis says grimly. Noct can finally see him thanks to the weak light of the phone screen. He’s still in his pajamas, peering out the small gap he’s making between the curtains and the glass with a dagger. “The entire outpost is dark from what I can tell.”

If the lights are out, then there is nothing to keep the daemons at bay. And Gladio walked out there alone.

Ignis lets the curtain fall closed. “Shoes, now,” he says, and follows his own command.

Noctis turns on the flashlight function of his phone and drops it on the bed so the light shines up at the ceiling. It illuminates the room just enough that he can find his boots. He shoves his feet into them and laces them up quicker than he ever has before. 

Prompto gets his shoes on first, rushes to the duffle bag containing their gear, and fishes out their lights. He clips his to the waistband of his sweatpants, attaches Ignis’s to the pocket of his sleep shirt, and tosses Noct’s onto the bed. Prompto shoves the fourth in a pocket and summons one of his pistols in another shower of sparks. 

Noctis turns on his light and clips it to the collar of his shirt. He leaves his phone where it is and follows Ignis to the door. Ignis turns on his light before slipping out into the hall of the motel. It’s only a few meters long, enough for the door to each of the rooms, a staircase presumably leading up to where the owner lives on the second story, a tiny office, and the front—and only—entrance. 

The moment that Ignis opens the front door, the wind rushes in. Noctis can smell the rain, taste the promise of lightning, and hears Gladio’s voice, too distorted for understanding but breaking through the storm in pieces anyway.

They spill out onto the porch and into the wet and windy night, and it only takes a moment to spot Gladio and understand why he didn’t immediately turn back when he realized the lights were out: there is swarm of daemons at the caravan. Almost a dozen of them, goblins and imps, darting in and out between Gladio and one of the hunters. The outside of the caravan is a mess of shapes in the dark; the furniture that normally sits outside is strewn all over the ground. These daemons don’t seem particularly strong, but there are a lot of them, and they’re  _ fast _ .

One of the chairs rises up from the ground, behind the hunter. Noctis summons one of his swords and throws, warping after it. He slams into where he knows the goblin should be—it screeches—and momentum makes both of them and the chair careen into the metal side of the caravan. He isn’t sure if that great  _ boom _ is their impact or thunder overhead, and Noct’s too busy getting his feet under him and yanking his sword free to think about it. 

The shots from Prompto’s gun crack over the storm, but the sound of Ignis’s daggers hitting home are drowned out. To Noct’s alarm, the wind is just strong enough to interfere with throwing the daggers that Ignis switches to his lance after the first handful of attacks. They still make short, brutal work of the fight once all of them are fighting together, and the last imp screeches as it boils away into the dark.

“Are you okay?” Noctis has to raise his voice to be heard. It’s aimed at everyone and no one in particular, but now that he can step in close to Gladio, he sees a thin trail of blood running down his bare arm.

“I’m fine. Check her.” Gladio jerks his head toward the hunter. He does offer Prompto a brief  _ thanks _ when he hands him his light. 

Ignis is already at her side. The hunter is a lean, muscular woman, a little shorter than Ignis. Her long, black hair is plastered to her head and shoulders, as is her clothing. But what makes Noct’s adrenaline spike is not how her sleep shorts and tank top cling to her, it’s how much of the fabric and her skin is dark with blood instead of water. Her sword trembles in her grasp.

Ignis presses a potion into her free hand. “Here, take this—”

She pushes it back to him, and her voice cracks like thunder. “It’s not mine.” Then she shakes her head when Ignis pulls out a phoenix down.

Noctis remembers the bearded man who sat across the booth from her at the diner and made her laugh. He glances over to the caravan on reflex. The door is gone, probably somewhere in the debris outside, and he can’t see anything but shadows beyond the open threshold.

“It’s likely the storm knocked out the power lines. We need to get the backup generator running.” Ignis can compartmentalize when he needs to, and Noct is grateful for it now. They need someone who can focus. “This outpost must have one. We need the light, and we need to wake everyone else.”

Before anyone else can get murdered in their sleep. Torn apart, specifically, if the hunter refused a phoenix down.  _ Fuck _ . 

The caravan and the motel are far edge of the outpost, separated from the buildings the residents live in by the gas station, convenience store, and diner. They barely heard the hunter screaming over the storm when she was within warping distance; they can’t count on anyone else to have heard the fight.

“The generator’s on the north side of the gas station, inside the chain-link fence,” Prompto says. “I saw it when Noct was filling up the Regalia.”

Gladio turns to him. “Think you can get it up and running?” When Prompto nods, he says, “Okay, you’re with me. Let’s get moving.”

“You got it, big guy.”

Gladio and Prompto break into a jog. Then to Noct’s horror, the hunter actually heads back  _ into _ the caravan. “I’ll meet you there,” she calls after them.

“Noct.”

Noctis startles at Ignis’s voice in his ear. The storm completely covered Ignis’s footsteps, and being surprised sets him on edge even though Ignis would never harm him. “When’s sunrise?”

“A quarter after six, or thereabouts.” Ignis’s glasses are streaked with rain, and his hair is limp across his forehead. Noct doesn’t know how he can even see at this point.

It makes Noctis suddenly aware of his own soaking hair and clothes. The only parts of him that are dry right now are his feet, and he can feel a shiver building along his spine. He projects as much confidence into his voice as he can. “Just two hours, then.”

Two hours, exposed in the dark, unless Prompto can get the generator going and the lights back on.

“Indeed.”

“I’ll take the right side,” Noctis says, and he doesn’t wait for confirmation. He summons a sword and warps his way across the asphalt until he reaches the first house. Not the most conservative use of his magic, but he’s remembering the hunter’s voice: 

_ It’s not mine. _

If they had gotten to this outpost half an hour earlier, they would have been in the caravan. It could have been him wearing Ignis’s or Gladio’s or Prompto’s blood. 

It could have been them wearing his.

Noctis beats the pommel of his sword against the door until it opens. A disgruntled, shirtless, middle-aged man stares back at him in irritation and confusion. Noctis goes for blunt because there’s no time for anything softer. “Power’s out, daemons already killed someone. This place have a blackout plan?”

The man gapes at him for a second, but he pulls himself together quickly with the help of a little terror. “Yeah. Everyone goes to the second floor of the motel—”

“Just do it,” Noct says, and he warps away.

He repeats the pattern down the street. At the fourth and last house on his side of the street, he only knocks twice before the door is yanked open and there’s an old woman with a pistol in his face. Noct phases to the left on instinct and nearly topples off the porch. 

“Blackout!” he gasps. “The daemons—”

She squints at him and lowers the gun slightly. “I noticed.” She ducks back inside for a second and emerges with a duffle bag. He smells gunpowder as she rushes past him in her nightgown and a pair of slippers, and Astrals, he hopes she lives alone. 

Noctis warps across the street, aiming for the last house on Ignis’s side. The street’s just wide enough that his warp doesn’t take him the entire distance, so he sprints the last few meters to the front porch.

Only he never quite makes it there, because as soon as he’s close enough, he hears low shouting, the crack of a gun, higher screaming—and decides to hell with the door. Noctis doesn’t slow down, he simply hurls his sword at, no  _ through, _ the window and warps after it.

He bursts inside the house with a shower of glass and crystalline sparks, staggers for footing amid an overturned coffee table and shattered bookshelf, and lunges at the flan looming over a shape on the floor. Noctis gets two strikes in before the thing sinks into the floor, giving him a few seconds’ break before it crawls back to try to ambush him. 

The shape on the floor is a man with a bloody head wound and a left arm that looks like it acquired a second elbow halfway down his forearm. The blood and bone breaking through the skin gleam in the light of Noct’s lamp. There is a crater in the drywall behind him, probably where the flan threw him, and a gun just out of reach. The man stirs when Noct crouches down and grabs his shoulder. “Can you get up?”

The man’s barely conscious, but he mumbles something and gropes in the direction of his gun. It takes a second—too long—to understand what he tried to say.

_ My son. _

There’s a high-pitched scream from the back of the house, and a warp takes Noctis down the hallway before it ends. There are two doors at the end, and Noctis hurls himself at the closed one. He isn’t as good at busting down doors as Gladio is, but adrenaline often makes up for skill, and the door gives way. Noctis throws himself at the flan pounding at the closet and buries his sword up to the hilt in it.

The daemon makes this awful, squishy noise that sends an involuntary shudder down Noct’s spine. He  _ hates  _ these things. Noctis yanks his sword back out and tries to dodge the slap the flan aims at him, but the room is too small for him to clear it. The attack clips his shoulder, nearly sending him to his knees. 

He staggers back into the hallway to try to give himself some space, but the flan gloops after him. Noctis brings up his sword in time to block the next blow and pulls back even more, drawing the flan away from the child screaming for help in the closet. He retreats into the room with the open door, which is the larger than the first. Noct risks a glance around and finds it empty, but he gets hit again for his trouble. Once the flan is fully inside the room, he feints with his sword and phases through the daemon— _ ugh _ —and back into the hallway. 

Noct spins around, dismisses the sword, and plucks a magic flask from the armiger. He chucks the blizzard spell at the flan. The blast of cold makes him gasp, and for a moment he thinks maybe he grabbed the wrong spell. But he realizes it is just his rain-soaked clothes that make the bite of the blizzard worse, so much worse that his bones feel like they might shatter. The flan makes that awful noise again, flailing about as parts of it freeze solid, and Noctis yanks the door closed on it. The spell won’t hold it long and the door’s useless as any real barrier, but Noct only needs a moment.

He rushes back to the closet, nearly slipping on the ice coating the floor, and takes a precious second to  _ not  _ yank it open, because the last thing he wants is to terrify this kid more. Noctis knows what it’s like to be a child at the mercy of daemons in the dark. He tries to sound friendly. “Hurry, kid. We need to get you and your dad out of here.”

To his relief, the boy opens the closet on his own. He brings up his hand to shield his eyes from Noctis’s light, but Noctis can still see the tears on his face. The boy can’t be more than ten or eleven, and Noctis puts on a smile for him and holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s move.”

* * *

Ignis finds them a few moments later and helps Noctis get the man to his feet. They have him and his son out the front door and headed for the motel before the flan pops up again. 

“I’ve got it,” Noctis tells Ignis. “Keep going.”

Ignis hesitates, but there is a seriously injured man who is too concussed to stand on his own and an anxious child beside him, and there is only one flan. “Catch up quickly.”

Noctis grins at him and throws himself back into the fight without making any promises. Out in the open, there’s room enough for him to swing and dodge, and that’s almost enough to make up for the fact that flan are  _ infuriating _ . Physical attacks don’t affect them much unless he’s using one of the royal arms, which leave him winded and feeling drained, and this isn’t exactly the ideal moment to try to use magic. His fire spells will be hampered by the rain, his lightning spells are out unless he wants to accidentally electrocute himself, and he can still feel the chill of that ice spell in his teeth. 

So Noctis hacks away at the flan with the Sword of the Wise until it finally dissolves into sludge. He dismisses his sword and takes a couple seconds to catch his breath before he jogs back toward the motel. 

Ignis is already on his way back out by the time he approaches, and he changes course when he spots Noctis, signalling him to follow. Noct does, across the street and toward the gas station. 

He spots Prompto, Gladio, and the hunter inside the chain-link fence on the north side. Their pale yellow lights are beacons in the dark, and it looks like the hunter found her own light, pants, and a jacket. It also looks like Gladio had to use one of his greatswords to smash their way into the enclosure. He and the hunter are standing guard over Prompto, who is crouched next to the generator and hands-deep into one of its open panels.

“Status?” Ignis asks as soon as they’re close enough to hear over the wind and rain.

“Working on it!” Prompto doesn’t even look up, and Noct tries not to think about him doing electrical work when he’s soaking wet. 

Gladio looks Noctis up and down, then Ignis, and relaxes when he sees neither of them have serious injuries. “What about the town?”

“Eighteen people total. Three wounded, and one more dead,” Ignis says calmly, and Gladio mutters something too low to catch. 

Noctis wonders if Ignis was the one who encountered the rest of the casualties or if the old woman, already armed, shots fired, hadn’t been alone. He shoves the thought aside. He can think about it later, once the light is back.

“They’ve all barricaded themselves into the second floor of the motel, with the proprietor,” Ignis continues. “All the adults that can hold a weapon are armed, and they have started illuminating the room. Flashlights, lanterns, cell phones, candles—whatever they can get their hands on, they’re lighting up.”

It’s dangerous to have everyone trapped together in a single space, though only slightly less than if everyone were spread out. If the light’s not strong enough, and daemons appear—

Noctis glances back at the motel, and he catches the faint glow of light slipping past the curtains in one of the second-story windows. Six, let it be enough, until they can get the generator going.

Noctis shivers at a sudden, strong gust, once more made aware of his soaking clothes and hair and skin. He and his friends all look a mess in their pajamas and shoes, and his fingers and ears burn from the cold as the minutes tick on. Noct runs his hands over his upper arms, trying to warm up a little, though it doesn’t help much with the rain still coming down.

“More daemons, out east.” The hunter’s voice catches everyone’s attention. 

Noctis peers through the chain-link at the far side of the enclosure—and yes, there, a glow just along the treeline, about thirty meters away. And— _ fuck _ . “Five thunder bombs and two galvanades,” he calls to the rest of the group.

With a storm like this, it was only a matter of time before lightning daemons showed up.

“We have to keep them back from the generator. They’ll fry it,” Prompto says, and there’s no mistaking the tight fear in his voice. “I just need a couple more minutes.”

There is a tense moment before Ignis starts issuing orders. “Gladio, guard Prompto. Everyone else, let’s keep the daemons as far back as possible. Focus on the galvanades, before they can spawn more thunder bombs. Keep what distance you can from each other. With how wet it is, we don’t want one attack to take out everyone.”

“Got it, Specs,” Noctis says. He throws his sword toward the roof line of the gas station, warps after it, hangs there for a second while Ignis and the hunter vault over the fence, and then warps out ahead of them. He hits the ground hard, shifts straight into a sprint, and makes a beeline for the first galvanade.

It would be a difficult fight on a dry night; tonight, when Noct can feel the soil beneath his feet squelch because of how water-logged it is, it’s a nightmare. Even when he dodges the main blast of an attack, he often ends up getting shocked anyway when the electricity hits and skitters across the soaked ground. Every time it’s a jolt to his chest as his lungs and heart try to remember what their rhythm is supposed to be. 

He warps back and forth between the two galvanades, trying to keep them from growing, swelling, exploding. Ignis and the hunter take the right and left sides of the battlefield, harrying the thunder bombs and keeping them from attacking Noct from behind or heading for Prompto and Gladio. Ignis pulls out his daggers whenever there is a lull in the wind and sends them flying, and Noctis follows close behind. 

Noctis starts to flag. He spent too much of the night warping, and he feels himself slipping perilously close to stasis. It makes him slower, less sharp, a little sloppy. He ignores the worry that’s pricking at the edges of his mind and changes tactics, dashing and vaulting between the daemons instead of warping. It gives the galvanades just enough time to grow.

Ignis takes down one of the thunder bombs, and Noctis drives his sword into the nearest galvanade. To his relief, it  _ finally _ dies, but it only takes one of the remaining thunder bombs with it. Noctis swings back around to—

The world is gray. 

The unsteady kind of gray, like dying lightbulbs or television static, formless but somehow with sharp, flickering edges. It is gray, and behind it, a distant roaring that’s everywhere all at once. He reaches for it, tries to feel its boundaries, becomes aware of the pressure along his back and thighs, curled around his head.

Snatches of memories: the weight of a sword, water dripping in his eyes, his chest expanding as a flash of light—

_ I passed out _ , Noctis thinks, and then he opens his eyes.

There is a hand on his chest and fingers at the pulse in his throat and Prompto’s face above him in the dark. “Thank  _ fuck _ ,” Prompto breathes, but he doesn’t pull his hands away. Instead, he leans in close to Noctis’s ear and whispers, “Be quiet.”

It is not a difficult command to obey, not when the rest of Noctis is slowly pulling out of the gray world. His entire body  _ aches _ , especially his chest, in a strange, too-tight way, like his muscles are all trying to cramp at once. His skin tingles painfully, on the wrong side of numb, and it takes way too long for him to realize that this is not what getting knocked out feels like.

His mind pieces together the last things he remembers, and he thinks this is probably what being electrocuted feels like.

He blinks, and then Prompto is gone, and Ignis is there with an elixir in his hands. The rush of magic makes him gasp, and Ignis’s gloved hand presses across his mouth to muffle it. It’s such a  _ weird _ thing for Ignis to do that Noctis goes utterly still.

The storm is whisper soft in the distance, almost gone. The only other thing he can hear is a low, muffled thumping that may or may not be his heartbeat.

The magic works through him, makes his muscles relax, causes the pain to recede, and forces the last of the gray out of his mind. Noctis realizes that he’s lying on the floor of the convenience store, with a shelf of candy on his right and a display of motor oil on his left. His light, Ignis’s light, are off; there is a faint, distant glow somewhere he can’t see, far dimmer than their lights normally are.

Noctis nods, slowly, and Ignis pulls his hand away only to help Noctis sit up. “Specs?” he keeps his voice low.

Ignis runs his hand down Noct’s back and leans in close. “One of the thunder bombs got a direct hit.”

“Generator?”

“We had to fall back. The daemons gave chase, and the generator was hit as well.”

_ Fuck _ .

Noctis looks around and spots Prompto hovering behind Ignis. Lodged on the shelf, about shoulder height, is a faintly glowing white ball of light, and it takes too long for Noctis to realize it’s someone’s light, wrapped in several layers of—is that toilet paper?—to dim it. “Where’s Gladio? The hunter?”

Ignis nods toward the front of the store. “Standing watch.” He pauses, then adds, “There is an iron giant along the south side of the outpost. It hasn’t strayed further north than the houses, but it is close.”

Noctis scrambles together his mental map of the outpost and realizes there is only a gas station between them and the daemon. The motel is just as close to danger with just the diner in between, and that thumping is  _ not _ his heart. He tries to stand up, but Ignis and Prompto both keep him from getting to his feet. 

“Take it easy, buddy.” 

“Right now, our best strategy is to stay still,” Ignis murmurs. “With the iron giant so close, no other daemons are spawning. As long as no one attracts its attention, we can outwait it.”

Noctis remembers pulling over at night, his heart in his throat and a sword in hand, watching an iron giant pace back and forth across the road. They spent hours hovering beside the Regalia, unable to move forward and unwilling to draw further away, for fear daemons would spawn and the ensuing fight would draw the giant’s attention. They stayed in their indecision until dawn, when the threat melted away.

“How long do we have?”

“Less than an hour.”

Not as long as the last time. Thank the Six for small favors.

* * *

They wait by the broken glass door for dawn to appear on the horizon. Prompto busted their way inside. He is embarrassed to admit it when Noct asks and quick to point out that Ignis broke into the safe where all the curatives are kept. They used their last ones getting Noctis stable; the elixir Ignis gave him was a stolen one. 

(Ignis stole several more and passed them out to everyone. No one objected.)

Noctis feels better, physically and magically, as the minutes pass, though his damp, muddy clothes keep him from warming up. They can see the iron giant from the front windows, and it’s easy to hear now that most of the storm is over. Its footsteps are regular. They’d almost be soothing, if they weren’t death wandering through the middle of the outpost. As it is, no one can relax, and they don’t talk more than in scattered whispers. No one wants to draw its attention.

It paces back and forth for forty-six minutes, sometimes drifting further north, sometimes further south. Then it stops. 

They all freeze while the iron giant just stands there in the street, and Noctis strains to listen. The wind hasn’t died down completely and the sky is still dark and low with clouds, but it’s no longer howling like it was when he first woke up. The only other thing he can hear is the occasional drip of water splashing to the pavement outside. The storm has nearly worked itself out.

The iron giant turns, raises its sword, and slams it into the front of the motel, not far from that sliver of light in the second-story window.

He’s rushing across broken glass and out into the pre-dawn air before he even registers the screaming. The moment he’s in range, Noctis hurls his sword at the iron giant’s right shoulder and warps. He feels an intense burst of satisfaction when he plunges the blade deep into the iron giant’s flesh and the daemon howls.

It only lasts for a second, though, because then the daemon swats him off its shoulder. Noctis tumbles through the air, warps to try to control his fall, and lands hard. His legs buckle beneath him and he crashes to his side, though he manages to keep from slamming his head into the  pavement. The iron giant turns away from the screaming motel, and that’s all that matters. 

Gladio is at his side a moment later, yanking him to his feet. “You good?” 

“I’m fine,” Noct manages to say before he and Gladio are forced to dodge in different directions to avoid the iron giant’s sword. 

“We need to draw it away from the motel.” That’s Ignis, his first dagger flying to lodge just above the daemon’s gauntlet. “The dawn is close. We need to keep the daemon occupied until then.”

“Got it!”

The daemon is ridiculously strong, and its strikes are powerful enough that Noctis only blocks when he has no other choice. Gladio uses his broadsword or his shield more often, but even then it is less risky—but more tiring—to dodge. The hunter never tries to block and trusts her footwork to keep her clear of any danger while she hacks away at the daemon’s feet and legs. The three of them drive it, draw it, further north, above the outpost. Noctis warps in and out of range, sometimes helping the hunter with her bloody work, other times striking at the daemon’s arms whenever Gladio has its attention.

He grits his teeth, reminds himself that he only has to last until the sun peeks above the horizon. Ignis or Gladio can yell at him later for being so reckless with his magic.

Prompto and Ignis stay out of the giant’s reach, harrying it from a distance. Ignis is always ready with a warning or instructions, and Prompto seems determined to shoot the daemon in the face until it falls. 

No, not the face in general; an eye erupts in a burst of black blood, and Prompto lets out triumphant shout. 

“Nice one!” Noctis calls out to him.

But the daemon staggers, flails, and Noctis has to phase out of the way to avoid getting hit by the broad side of the giant’s sword. 

The sword goes through him and catches the hunter full on. She goes flying—catches a horrifying amount of air—and rolls to a bone-breaking stop on the asphalt. 

She does not get back up.

Instead, she gets pulled in when the daemon’s left hand glows red and purple. They all do, but while everyone else fights against the pull, the hunter can’t. Her body scrapes, tumbles along the fissured ground, heading straight for the daemon. If she’s not dead already, the giant will crush her beneath its foot once she reaches it.

Ignis and Gladio are going to be so  _ pissed _ at him.

Noctis summons the Sword of the Wise and leaps for the center of the daemon’s gravity attack. He doesn’t propel the sword into the daemon’s palm so much as he aims and lets the magic do the work. The sword punches through flesh, and the daemon  _ howls _ .

Then its fingers clench hard around Noctis and his sword. The pommel rams into his chest, which would have been enough to knock the wind from him if it weren’t for the massive fingers already crushing him. Noctis dismisses the sword on reflex, which buys him enough space to gasp before the hand spasms tighter, swallowing him up from ankles to shoulders and drenching him with hot, inhuman blood.

_ “Noct!” _

His ribs creak, and one—two, three, he doesn’t know how many—give way beneath the pressure. Pain blossoms along his sides, and he has no breath to scream and none of the momentum he needs to phase through the hand. 

He struggles anyway, fighting against the pressure and the red-gray creeping in at the edges of his vision. The world is slowly sliding underwater, the noise of the battle going distant and distorted, until the only thing he can hear is the frantic pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.

The pressure disappears, and he falls.

This time Noctis has no control of it at all, and he lands in a crumpled heap. He tries to breathe, to push himself back on his feet, to  _ move _ , but the best he can manage is to shift his head a little so he can see where the next blow is coming from.

He doesn’t expect to see the iron giant stumbling backwards, smoke curling off its skin. He doesn’t expect to see a thin shaft of pink-gold light gild the edges of the jagged asphalt. 

He thinks that Prompto would like the framing of this close-up shot, and then he stops thinking.

* * *

Noctis wakes, sudden and sharp, his heart pounding like he was ripped from a nightmare. No, not a nightmare, a  _ battle _ .

The sudden rush of memory is disorienting, and he tries to summon a sword and get to his feet at the same time. What he manages to do is half fall out of bed.

Gladio is there to catch him, his hands and voice steady as he presses him back into bed. “Easy, Noct. It’s over.”

“Guys?” It comes out a gasp. Noctis is vaguely aware it’s not entirely coherent, either, but Gladio has known him long enough that doesn’t really matter. 

“Iggy and Prompto are fine, nothing a little potion couldn’t fix. They’re helping with cleanup and getting us re-supplied. The hunter was in rougher shape, but she’s on the mend. You, on the other hand—”

Noctis registers the dangerous tone in Gladio’s voice about the same time he realizes he can actually breathe, full deep breaths. His ribs ache, but he knows that will linger despite the magic they used on him while he was out. “The rest of the outpost?”

The look Gladio gives him says he knows Noct is trying to change the subject, but he does answer. “Two dead, five wounded.” 

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Could’ve been worse, but yeah.”

It’s silent for a while. Noctis eventually gets his heartbeat under control and pushes himself up to sitting, though he leans back against the headboard. Someone got him cleaned up and into a new change of clothes. Probably Ignis. Their motel room is undamaged, and the curtains are open wide. The sky must have cleared up because the light outside is warm and bright. Noctis glances at the nightstand, and finds his phone, plugged in and actually—miraculously—charging. It’s a little past four in the afternoon.

“The power’s back?”

“About two hours ago. Iggy was right, the storm knocked out the power. Tree branch took out the lines, but once the techs from Lestallum found the problem, they fixed it up fast. Outpost is going to have to wait a while for a new generator, though.”

“We’re not...staying here another night, are we?”

Gladio gives him look that’s part exasperation, part irritation, and part amusement. “Not a chance. I think everyone’s had enough of your heroics for the week.”

Noctis throws a pillow at him but doesn’t argue. He’s had enough of his own heroics, too.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at [tumblr](http://audreyskdramablog.tumblr.com/) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/audreyskdrama) if you like.


End file.
